


Three Percent

by pidgethepidgeon



Series: Beetlejuice Short Stories [10]
Category: Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Angst, Charles just wants everything to be okay, Emily get sick, Hurt/Comfort, Lydia is smol, Sad, Sad Ending, Sickfic, Sorry for the sad content, TW: Vomit, This is really sad guys, pre-musical events, tw: cancer, tw: death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21881854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pidgethepidgeon/pseuds/pidgethepidgeon
Summary: Lydia is twelve years old when she finds out that Emily is sick. At first the odds seem to be on their side, but as time goes on the chances are not looking as promising
Series: Beetlejuice Short Stories [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556005
Comments: 15
Kudos: 47





	Three Percent

Lydia knew something was wrong the minute she walked in the door from school. Her mother was usually home to greet her, she had a lunch break from work around that time, but to see her father sitting on the couch too was a strange sight. Her father usually worked later into the evening, coming home in just enough time for dinner around seven. Lydia set down her backpack and was gestured to join them in the living room. She anxiously sat down on the couch, placing a pillow in her lap while she watched her parents intently. Her dad stared down at the ground and her mom had tears in her eyes, but a weak smile on her face. Lydia’s stomach sank and she knew something very bad was about to be told to her. She knew she didn’t do anything bad at school, her grades were fine, and while her grandparents were old they were both healthy so she didn’t think it was going to be about any of that.

“What’s going on?” she finally found the courage to ask. Charles buried his face in his hands and Lydia started to panic.

Emily quickly ran over to the couch her twelve-year-old daughter was sitting on and wrapped her in a tight hug before telling her, “So I’m sure you’ve noticed that I haven’t been feeling so well lately...the doctors did some tests and, and no sweetie don’t cry, don’t cry. I haven’t even told you what they said to me yet. Lydia, I’m not going to sugar coat this, it would be demeaning to you to not be honest. I have something called non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Lydia, I have cancer.”

Suddenly Lydia’s world felt like it was spinning and nothing else that was said to her made any kind of sense. All that kept running through her mind was that terrifying word. Cancer. Nobody ever wants to hear that, not about themselves, not about their family, not about anybody. She just felt so numb. The conversation continued but Lydia couldn’t even register it, she just clung to her mother like a life-line, so afraid that if she let go she would be gone. 

“Honey please look at me,” Emily begged, gently grabbing her chin and tilting it up towards her. With her thumb, she gingerly wiped away the flow of tears on Lydia’s cheek, “Don’t cry, honey please don’t cry. The doctors, they’re confident that I can beat it.”

“Be-beat it?” Lydia stuttered

“They said it’s a seventy-one percent chance that I can beat this, and with all the new treatments. Honey please I promise I’m not going anywhere any time soon. Would I lie to you?”

Lydia shook her head, the sense of doom looming her stomach slowly fading as she acknowledged the confidence in her mother’s eyes and words. She still couldn’t help herself, she started sobbing and threw herself into her mother’s arms, Emily running her hands through Lydia’s long blonde hair trying to mutter reassurances. Lydia knew she was being selfish, so caught up in her own emotions that she never even bothered to ask how her mother was coping with the life-changing news. Emily must have been so scared, but she had to be brave for Lydia, who even though she liked to pretend she was all grown up, she was still a scared little girl who needed her mother. Life would never be the same after that day, everyone would try to go on with life business as usual but there was now this dark cloud looming of their family. It took an incredibly hard toll on the once bright and cheery Lydia who now spent most of her time by her mother’s side or alone in her room. 

She would beg and plead to go to doctor’s appointments with her mom, she just wanted to be involved for her peace of mind and to comfort Emily, but Charles thought that spending so much time at hospitals, doctor’s offices, and around such a sad topic would just make Lydia worse off. After a year Emily wasn’t seeing much progress but she didn’t feel like she was getting any worse. She was still able to go through her life almost the same as she had been before. The medications had some nasty reactions but it wasn’t something she couldn’t handle. It wasn’t until the one year mark when the doctors suggested they try a round of chemotherapy to attack the cancer more directly. The treatments were incredibly rough on Emily who very quickly lost strength from the strong medications she was on. Though she wanted to treat Lydia maturely she would try to hide the more adverse reactions from her daughter so as not to frighten her anymore. The cancer was getting more aggressive, doctors started to fumble in their confidence, their rate of survival estimates started getting lower and all of it was kept a secret from Lydia. At home, Emily would put on a brave face and try to act as though nothing has changed. Lydia was still only a kid, she couldn’t see through her mother’s fake smiles and false confidence. The first time she realized things were worse than she had been told was when she woke up to find her mother hunched over on the bathroom floor, clutching a trashcan in her pale and shaky hands. Lydia sunk down on the floor with her and held her mother’s hand in her own. Emily broke down, so broken and weak, and feeling pathetic because she couldn’t stay strong, she felt as though she failed her daughter. 

While they were sitting on the bathroom floor hugging and crying Lydia couldn’t help but remember a time when the situation was reversed. She was about six or seven years old and a nasty stomach bug was floating around the school and as germy little kids are, Lydia caught it and caught it bad. Being so tiny even at that age sickness was always so much worse. It had already been two days of fevers, chills, and nausea, but that night Lydia crawled into the bathroom and just prayed that she would throw up already, knowing she would feel better if she could get it over with. She didn’t want to wake her parents, they had already been so attentive the past few days and running themselves ragged trying to take care of them that she didn’t want to bother them but her mother must have heard her whimpering because her mother appeared in the doorway and was quickly down on the floor rubbing her back comfortingly. Lydia cried to her mother about how she tried so hard to not wake them because they had been working so hard that the whole night but Emily just explained to her that family doesn’t need to feel guilty about needing help and that Lydia should never feel bad for getting sick. When Lydia did eventually throw up her mother just kept telling her that everything will be alright. The rest night Emily stayed up with her, and when little Lydia finally fell asleep she scooped her up in her arms and carried her back to her bed. She tucked her in and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead before snuggling Lydia’s favorite stuffed animal in the sleeping child’s arms. Emily never knew that Lydia was still semi-awake and cherished that memory. Her mom called off work that next morning and the two of them spent the whole day bundled up on the couch watching tv-shows that were completely mind-numbing to Emily but Lydia seemed to be enthralled with them. 

Now here Lydia was, six years later, comforting her mother as she threw up. Lydia shakily placing her hand on her mother’s back and whispering how it will be alright. Though she wasn’t sure if she was talking to her mother or herself. The next morning Emily could hardly bring herself to make eye contact with Lydia as she sleepily got ready for her day at school. Looking over at her daughter she saw how the whole thing had been forcing her to grow up even faster. She was making her own lunches, she did almost all the chores in the house, would cook dinner once or twice a week, and she never asked for help with her homework. All Emily ever wanted to do was protect her daughter and make life easier for her but now she felt like she was a burden on her family. Even Charles treated her like she was some fragile piece of glass. Emily still tried to keep the brunt of the bad news just between her and Charles, not wanting to bring Lydia any more distress. For another six months, she went through rounds and round of treatment, with minimal progress and a lot of terrible side effects. Her hair started getting thinner and her body much weaker. She had been sick for almost a year and a half when she was rushed to the emergency room after collapsing in the bathroom while Lydia was at school. Charles was by her bedside when she was told that the cancer had metastisized to her spinal cord and she had less than a three percent chance to survive the next six months. The news felt like a brick had been thrown through a glass window and the world came shattering around her. She felt as though her life was falling apart around her and she could only think about one thing. She could only think about how she didn’t want to leave Lydia. She sobbed in her husband’s arms about how she would never get to see Lydia grow up, never get to see her graduate high school, go off to college, get married, or have children. She was going to miss everything and there was nothing that she could do about it. 

“What if we don’t tell her?” Charles suggested to his wife, “That way she doesn’t have to spend the next few months just...just waiting and worrying. We can just pretend that-”

“Charles I can’t do that to her. I really can’t keep lying to her, and telling her that everything is going to be okay. Honey, I am dying. I am going to die. I am not going to leave this world having lied to my daughter for the last six months that I am going to know her. I can’t, I just I won’t do that.”

Charles sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed, rubbing at her eyes, trying to hide the tears forming, “You two are my whole world. I don’t want to lose you, and I don’t want to make Lydia any more upset than she already is.”

Emily cried “I don’t want to either but Charles she has a right to know.”

Charles hesitantly agreed and went to go pick up Lydia early from school, the car ride there he didn’t explain anything to Lydia besides the fact that her mother had fainted and was in the hospital. Lydia could tell by his silence that it was more than just a fall, she sat in the backseat with her arms tightly wrapped around herself just trying to hold herself together and prepare herself for the worst. She ran into the hospital room and tried her best to not look frightened when she saw all the wires and needles attached to her mother. Lydia was always very small, she got it from her mom, but she never realized just how small her mother was until she saw her drowning in the large white hospital bed. Emily tried to sit up and reach out to her daughter, but her body was so weak from the fall that all she could manage to do was slightly elevate herself. 

Lydia bit down on her lip and without hesitation asked, “Please just tell me.”

“There is no easy way to tell this to you, sweetheart, I really wish it wasn’t the case but I don’t think I’m going to have much longer...much longer to live.”

“W-what?” Lydia whispered, “No, but you said..the doctors said..you had a seventy percent chance of beating it. That you’d be okay! Were you lying to me, was all of this a lie so I wouldn’t freak out!”

Charles went over to his now hysterical daughter, “Lydia-”

“No Charles, she has every right to be angry. We weren’t lying when we told you that it was a seventy percent chance, that’s what we were told by the doctors, but we did lie to you about when it started to get worse. It went down to fifty percent after six months, it went down to forty-four percent eight months ago. When we went to the specialist two months ago it was down to twenty-seven.”

Lydia whimpered but stood eerily still in place like her body was frozen at the sound of the news. Emily felt like a monster, destroying every last shred of hope that Lydia had left, throwing numbers at her fourteen-year-old, giving her seconds to process it when she and Charles had months. She wished that she had never tried to keep it a secret in the first place, she wished that she wasn’t sick, she wished that she could be stronger for Lydia, she wished that she wasn’t going to die. She was so scared to die, to leave everybody behind. She was so afraid for Lydia and how alone she would feel, and so worried that Charles would just try and bottle everything away like he always did even when he was broken inside. She was going to leave her family in shambles and nobody would be there to help them pick up the pieces. 

“What is it now?” Lydia asked, her voice cracking between the sobs but it was evident that there was still a little glimmer of hope that she was desperately still trying to hold onto. There was a sliver of hope that even if it was low that her mother could still turn it around and be okay, she heard of miracle stories all the time when people would have a twenty percent chance of living and they’d turn out okay. Lydia had a number in her mind, a number that she could cope with. Anything above twenty-percent and she thought she could handle the news. She felt her legs shaking as Emily stifled back a sob, but Lydia just kept repeating her arbitrary number in her head praying against all odds that it would be higher than that, that there was a chance her mother would be okay.

“They said it’s a three percent chance…..that I’m going to make it.”

“It’s a little bit than what it is in my mind.” Lydia’s head started spinning and she felt like she had been kicked in the stomach. More tears started welling up in her eyes and she flung herself to her mother’s bedside and laid her head on her mother’s stomach and started to sob, her shoulders shaking with every breath. Emily held on so tightly to her daughter lost for any words to say to make her feel better.

“It’s okay, I think I can take it.” Emily tried to comfort her, tried to convince her daughter and herself that maybe miracles do happen and maybe she won’t die in the next four months. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe

Lydia looked up at her mother, tears making her doe brown eyes glassy, “They said it’s a three percent chance?”


End file.
